


Right Now, We're Alive

by duchessofthemoonbase



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Valentine's Day Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:33:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29432478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duchessofthemoonbase/pseuds/duchessofthemoonbase
Summary: Poe loves to tell Rey war stories, tales of those who loved and lost before them……but living the story yourself is a little more complicated.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey
Comments: 17
Kudos: 27
Collections: Damerey Discord Shenanigans





	Right Now, We're Alive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SunburnStardust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunburnStardust/gifts).



> Happy Valentine’s Day SunburnStardust! I managed to use four of the dialogue prompts and came up with this! A little angsty and a little sweet (with bonus RebelCaptain!) I hope you enjoy! <3, Duchess
> 
> -“I heard enough, this ends now.”  
> -“Why haven’t you kissed me yet?”  
> -“Can you feel this?”  
> -“I’m better when I’m with you.”

“Anyway,” Poe said. They were sitting up late again, the two of them alone in the cockpit of the Falcon. Everyone else was long asleep. “After Cassian shot Krennic, Jyn managed to transmit the Death Star plans just in time, and…”

Rey wasn’t listening. Not to the words, at least. She was listening to Poe’s voice, the excitement she only heard in it when he told her stories. Epic tales of heroes from the Rebellion, or the dastardly plans of villains from the Clone Wars. The war had been tough on Poe, wearing down his spirit, but when he told her these stories, he became fully alive again—as if he remembered why he was fighting.

And that was why she asked to hear them. Again and again.

“After that Jyn and Cassian went down to the beach, and no one ever saw them again. But they would have had their last moments together, knowing that they’d done something that would change history for the better.” Poe sighed, leaning back against the wall. “Not a very happy ending, that one.”

“But it’s not exactly a sad one, either,” Rey said. “They died for what they believed in.”

“Some people, when they saw Jyn and Cassian…some people thought there was something there between them.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Poe said. “Do you think if they did love each other, they would have said something on that beach?”

“I guess we’ll never know,” she said, meeting his eyes. Something passed between them then, something both of them were too terrified to name aloud. “I suppose you never know when it’ll be too late.”

Poe sighed, resting his head on his knees. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you don’t.”

They were rare, these quiet moments between them, these moments when there was space to confess. Perhaps they feared it—the affection that always made itself more obvious when they weren’t in the midst of the fight, bickering over what to do next.

They had been so soft with each other at the very beginning, both of them looking to the other with reverence and admiration that first time they introduced themselves. But that admiration soon began to boil over, transmuting into something new, something strong, and they’d both panicked. The fear and confusion turned into a strange antagonism, both of them arguing with each other on nearly every point.

It was better than facing it.

***

They raced through the jungle as the sun sank below the trees, stumbling over roots and ducking under branches. The sounds of blasters going off echoed in the distance behind them, growing fainter as they ran.

Rose hurried to catch up, stopping as they hit a clearing. “I think we lost them,” she panted, barely able to hold herself up.

“Looks like it,” Finn said. “Now all we have to do is locate that bunker.”

“It should be around here somewhere,” Rey said, examining the ground. “And even if we do find it, getting in might be another story.”

“We’ll get in,” Poe assured them.

Leia had tasked her four favorite members of the Resistance with a mission today: to locate an old underground bunker from the Rebellion, one that could possibly contain blueprints for Imperial weapons that were still in use by the First Order. If they acquired these apocryphal blueprints, the Resistance could then study vulnerabilities in the weapons and figure out the best way to destroy them.

They’d been searching the humid and overgrown surface of this planet all day, and an encounter with stormtroopers hadn’t made their task any easier.

“Hm…” Rose pondered. “Where would one hide a bunker?”

“It’s getting late,” Poe said, and he looked up at the sun setting over the jungle, tinging its bright greens with golds and pinks. “It’s not safe for us to stay here much—”

“No.”

“No?”

Rey marched up to him, challenge in her eyes. “We flew all the way to the Outer Rim to find this bunker. I’m not reporting back to Leia with empty hands.”

“And I’m not letting anyone get killed for a set of stupid blueprints that might not even be in there! We haven’t even found the bunker yet!”

Finn and Rose glanced at each other and retreated into the jungle.

“Typical,” Rey said, rolling her eyes. “You _always_ have to step in and try to make some amendment to the plan so you’ll look like a hero if something goes wrong.”

“Me? _Me!?_ ” Poe yelled. “You’re the one constantly throwing yourself into danger, and _who_ has to risk themselves to come help you? Me, or Finn, or Rose, when we’re not even the ones who—”

“You know what you are?”

“What?”

“You’re difficult. Really difficult. You’re a difficult man.”

“Yeah, well you, you are—”

“Guys!” Finn’s voice called out from across the distance. “Will you two shut up? I think we’ve found something!”

They ran through the jungle and found Finn and Rose standing before a mass of tangled vines. Rose lifted them back with a smile, revealing a rusted door that had already been pried open.

“You found it like this?” Poe asked.

“No, moron,” Rose said. “Me and Finn got it open. _Some of us_ were working on the mission while you two were having another one of your fights.”

Finn pried the door open further and turned to Poe and Rey. “Go on in you guys.”

They both darted inside the bunker without a second thought, Finn and Rose still hovering outside the door. It was completely barren except for a flickering light that hung precariously from the ceiling.

“I don’t understand,” Poe said, frantically examining the walls. “Where are the blueprints? They should be here.”

“ _Ohhhh_ ,” Finn mocked from the door. Rose held up a stack of papers and giggled. “You mean _these_ blueprints? We already took them out.”

Rey stopped and looked at her friends. “What’s going on?”

Finn slammed the door shut and locked it. “While you two were arguing, Rose and I came to a decision. We’ve heard enough. This ends. Now.”

Rey ran to the door and shook at the handle. “This isn’t funny!”

Rose giggled from outside. “It is. Just a little bit.”

“Come on you guys,” Poe shouted. “We’re sorry. Can you just—can you just open the door.”

“Sure we will,” Rose said. “In two hours.”

“In— _what!?”_

“You heard her,” Finn said. “We’re going to relax back on the Falcon, maybe play a couple rounds of Sabacc. And when we get back, you two will have worked out whatever the damn problem is you guys have with each other.”

“That’s hilarious, Finn,” Poe said, banging on the door again. “Really hilarious. Now could you please just—”

He fell silent, and then turned back around to look at Rey, completely unamused. “They left, didn’t they.”

“Yup.”

***

Rey paced around the small room, trying desperately to think of a way out. Poe had already given up, deciding to spend the remaining hour and a half napping on the floor, his back against the wall as he dozed.

“There has to be a way out,” Rey muttered, kicking at the door.

“If we haven’t found one yet, we’re not going to,” Poe said, yawning as he stared up at the flickering light on the ceiling. “We got the blueprints, and there’s no use wasting our energy on Rose and Finn’s dumb prank. We may as well wait it out.”

“I’m not _interested_ in waiting it out,” Rey insisted. “I want to get out of here.”

“You know, if you hadn’t started that argument with me in the first place, we wouldn’t even—”

“Me!? There wouldn’t have _been_ an argument to start if you hadn’t—”

“No,” Poe said, standing to his feet. “I have every right to be angry at the fact that you keep risking your life when you don’t have to.”

Rey scoffed and stepped forward to face him. “Well, I’m sorry if rescuing me is such an inconvenience to you.”

“It has nothing to do with inconvenience and you know it,” Poe snapped, staring down at the floor.

“Oh really? What then?”

Poe looked at her then, something soft and vulnerable shining out of his eyes. “Do you really think I don’t care about you at all?”

“No, I just…”

“Okay, what then?”

The words left her mouth before she knew how to stop them: “Then why haven’t you kissed me yet?”

Poe was shocked into silence, and Rey trembled at the possibility that she’d said the wrong thing, that she’d misread his signals…that tension that hovered in the air between them; both when they fought and in their quieter moments, and oh maker what if she’d just ruined the whole—

She felt his hand clasp around her own, and warmth shot through her.

“Believe me, it’s not because I don’t want to,” he said.

“Okay,” Rey said, staring up at him. “Why then?”

Poe took her hand and brought it to his chest, pressing it to the center. “Can you feel this?”

At first Rey just felt the warmth of solid muscle, but then her fingers traced over something harder—a small metal circle suspended on a chain. “It’s a necklace.”

“It’s a ring,” he said. “It belonged to my mother. Do you…do you know about my parents?”

“No,” she whispered, Poe still holding her hand to his heart.

“My parents fought in the Rebellion. Fell completely and utterly in love amongst all the war and chaos. And then my mother died.”

“I’m sorry, Poe, I didn’t know.”

“It was after the war ended, but I saw what it did to my father. I saw who he was while she lived and who he became after she died. There was this…hole in our lives that affected everything. He was never truly alive after that. When I was younger he’d get this look in his eyes sometimes, like life was over for him. Like there wasn’t any point left. And it terrified me. It really, really…”

Rey brought Poe into her arms, holding him as silent tears ran down his cheeks.

“I’d need both hands to count how many times I’ve almost lost you in the one year we’ve known each other,” he whispered, hiding his face in her shoulder. “Do you understand now why I’m so scared to kiss you?”

She stepped back and looked at him. At Poe Dameron, hero of the Resistance. A man who they would one day tell stories about. A man so full of bravery and kindness—and love. So much love he was afraid of himself.

“I’m sorry I keep yelling at you,” he said, shaking his head. “I think somehow I thought if I scolded you I could convince myself that my feelings for you weren’t there, but that was probably stupid, I don’t know why I—”

“Let’s sit down,” Rey said, taking his hand and pulling them down to the floor. She didn’t let go of it, just watched their fingers move, soft and intertwining in the flickering light. “That story you told me earlier, about Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor…”

“What about it?”

“Say they did love each other,” she said. “Say they admitted it to each other, for the first time, moments before their death on that beach. Would it have mattered?”

“Of course it would have mattered.”

“Nothing is for certain,” Rey said. She looked down, slowly tracing over the lines of his palm with her fingertips. “And everything ends in loss. But it doesn’t mean we should fear that pain so much that we sacrifice love altogether. I think…” she sighed, leaning her head on Poe’s shoulder. “I didn’t know your parents, but I think if your dad had the choice to go back and erase his time with your mother, he wouldn’t do it. No matter how much pain it ended up causing him.”

“Yeah, he wouldn’t have,” Poe said, and squeezed her hand tighter. “But it doesn’t mean I’m not scared.”

“I’m scared too,” she said, leaning her forehead against his. “But I’d rather be scared along with you. And I’d rather risk being with you now than risk looking back years from now and wishing we’d been braver.”

“You’re right, sunshine,” Poe said, and she smiled at his nickname for her, the one that only surfaced in their quieter moments. “I’m better when I’m with you. And right now…we’re alive.”

“We’re alive,” she said.

“Would you like to feel a little more alive?” he asked, unable to resist a cheeky smile. His lips were already hovering mere centimeters away from hers.

Rey giggled. “I would.”

He kissed her then, soft and sweet and slow, his lips moving tenderly against her own as they fell into each other’s arms. New worlds of possibility opened up, worlds of longing sighs and passionate nights and promises that would be for always. All sorts of new beginnings, even when there might be endings.

Even if one day a ship crashed burning through space…

Even if one day a weapon cut someone down…

They would spend those last moments remembering _this,_ a first kiss that was worth waiting for, worth risking for.

And when Finn and Rose came back to see them asleep, cuddled in each other’s arms with smiles on their faces, they left the door cracked open, and left them in peace.


End file.
